Interesting enough another incident happened in Q's Winter Wonderland. My character had 9 data samples in inventory. There were a few players running around using their abilities (healing, cover shields, etc...) A guy approached my character, my character flashed blue and data samples started disappearing, one at a time. The chat log said "you used a data sample" 9 times. The person disappeared and I couldn't locate him. I'm starting to think now that he didn't 'steal' the data samples, but that he triggered the routine that removes them from inventory when the event is finished. The routine obviously has some bugs if it's allowing my characters to keep data samples after the event.

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Hold on... are you talking about the particles, or the data samples (like those you get from scanning anomalies in normal missions? If it's the latter, they're bonus data samples, you shouldn't be losing them - but the particle fragments will vanish soon after the event.

Sorry for the confusion. Particles from the Academy collecting events. The unused particles stayed in my inventory until the event above happened.

On another note... I was helping my daughter with her KDF Orion Engineer. Took the Orion Dacoit flight-deck cruiser (hybrid cruiser/light carrier) in the Borg Incursion. It's a nice looking ship that performs well. Initially there was only one other player but two more joined later. Launching fighters seems to confuse the enemy so the Dacoit was rarely targeted. The Command ship was a little difficult, but I just turned and gave it the good old broadside attack while alternating the fighters between attack and intercept. And another Borg Unimatrix command ship bites the dust...

I recommend that you have your KDF character pick up a Flight Deck Officer if you're going to use carriers. If you haven't used carriers, there are four commands:
Attack - go get the selected target
Intercept - fly CAP and intercept anything incoming
Escort - fly CAP around an ally's ship
Recall - return to the ship

The Dacoit is a KDF Cmdr level ship. The Vo'quv Carrier is a KDF Brig Gen ship. My Orion Sci Officer picked one up, but hasn't tested it yet. I think the carriers bring a new and exciting element into ship combat for the KDF. I hope to see something soon for the Federation.

Not the announced downtime (think it was set for 7am PST?). My game wouldn't load at 6:30am EST this morning. And then a few minutes after my post here, it was up again, with the announcement that it would be down later this morning.

And why is the website down when the game loader is down? Surely they aren't THAT inter-dependent...? Someone trip and power cycle the router there or something?

I've had it happen to me several times early in the morning, game just won't load, and website is down.

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Cryptic has a central authentication server. It authenticates all their games on all servers, and authenticates anything else that requires authentication, such as the websites and the XMPP server. That's probably what's having trouble when you see this.

I'm mostly enjoying the DOFF system, but don't like how many advancement points you get, it kinda wrecks the game. I had a toon start as a Captain using the system. He's now a VA, but didn't play more than a few episodes, advanced entirely through DOFF points. Played a couple Cardassian levels, no borg, no undine, no breen missions. Now he's at end game with more than half the missions undone. Doing the STFs, and occasionally running a mission just because I'm bored and don't know what else to do. My KDF character is up to Captain 5, and I've only done one mission (ONE) in the entire game.

Progression needs to be slowed WAY down if they are going to give away so many points. Hell, completing one slew of DOFF missions is worth about an entire level or so by itself. Racing to level 51 is pretty dumb if they have no idea what to do with level 51 players...

Has anyone had trouble with the Reman deep space encounter in the Alpha Centauri sector block? I've played it twice, and both times the game has been giving me credit for Romulan ship kills rather than the Reman ones I need to finish that accolade.

You have some good comments. Here's my experience and thoughts on the DOFF system. I initially embraced it on the Tribble Test Server where I achieved level 2 and 3 commendation on several areas.

First, I love it. It adds a stratiegic element to the game. By careful assignment of DOFFs to Space and Ground positions, my characters abilities are enhanced. I had an Klingon Engineer with two Engr BOs and a DOFF to beam in extra turrets. In the Defari Invasions, they laid down a constant forest of phaser turrets.

Second, I think it's fun. My Engineer characters primarily send DOFFs on engineering assignments. Science characters send DOFFs on science and exploration assignments and Tactical characters send DOFFs on military and espionage assignments. A little bit of role-playing involved plus an effort to achieve a higher commendation in their fields and bonus DOFFs with those associated specializations. The chain assignments also show a continuity which makes for better play that just doing random assignments as they come up.

Third, the DOFF system is the new grind. Previously to advance in rank required grinding away in a couple of sectors, again and again. That got boring extremely fast. Now I can just send the DOFFs off on assigments.

Fourth, I've already taken a character to VA the old way. Took a lot of work. Changed out all personal and ship equipment at every stage. With the DOFF system, I can ramp a character up rapidly and just change out equipment once. Perhaps some players like clawing their way up, but everybody's different. I don't like playing the characters at Lt or LCDR level. To me the sweet spot is CMDR 6 to RALH 4. My characters can show off their skills at those ranks.

Fifth, the DOFF system is a another way to earn Dilithium and equipment. They may get 500 or 1,000 dilithium on a critical success. My characters have also been acquiring several purple items from the DOFF assignments. Some are very high dollar. It it's something the character can use, they do, otherwise it sells on the exchange and fuels other endeavors.

Lastly, the DOFF system is optional. As far as I know, no character is required to compete any DOFF assignments to advance in the game. So people that are intimidated by it or just aren't interested can ignore the DOFF system and go on with normal play.

Despite anything I've stated above, I agree that advancement to the next rank should involve completing the storyline. (I think that I've posted that comment on the STO forum previously.) I also think that there should some type of peer and/or fleet commendations available. Perhaps when a character is eligible for promotion, a query is sent to the fleet leader to see if they recommend the character for promotion to the next rank. If they disagree with the promotion, the character could still be promoted but may have to work harder at it. (Perform some difficult special mission.) Characters not in fleets would have a difficult time being promoted. They would need to perform these special missions to show they have what it takes. Just my thoughts. Thanks for reading.

Feel like you missed the point I was after. Agree with everything you said, i LIKE the DOFF system. They just need to tone the advancement points WAY down, as you can beat the game through the DOFF system in a very short period, and never actually play any of the story.

There's a million ways to get points and shoot through ranks, but not many ranks and no endgame to speak of once you get there (new STFs are worse than before, just a boring grind with no story anymore), so they need to stop burning through ranks so fast and at least get you to play the few missions they have.

Feel like you missed the point I was after. Agree with everything you said, i LIKE the DOFF system. They just need to tone the advancement points WAY down, as you can beat the game through the DOFF system in a very short period, and never actually play any of the story.

There's a million ways to get points and shoot through ranks, but not many ranks and no endgame to speak of once you get there (new STFs are worse than before, just a boring grind with no story anymore), so they need to stop burning through ranks so fast and at least get you to play the few missions they have.

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Perhaps I did.

I think this is a case of the left hand of Cryptic not knowing what the right hand is doing. Cryptic repeatedly stated that character advancement would be slowed down in Season 5; however, they implemented a new system that lets characters ramp up to VA in approximately 30 game hours.

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To correct what I previously said about the Colonial assignment chains, it seems to give a fixed reward. The Renown DOFF for the Delta Volanis cluster is a blue Defari doctor. So if you're in need of a rare doctor, head out to the DV cluster and run the assignment chain.

Heretic was on the DOFFJOBS channel last night. He said that he's fixed a lot of bugs on the DOFF systems and assignments. I think those have been posted in the STO forum.

He was surprised that some people had multiple copies of the unique DOFFs. They did not anticipate players running assignment chains more than once. (never underestimate the tenacity of a player...)

Or the crappy design of the system. I don't really look at what the assignments are, just take whatever pops up in whatever system i'm in when i get the flashing light that I've finished one. I tend towards the green/blue/purple ones when i can, and maybe focus on Diplomatic ones more to try and get the next level there, but since it's not laid out in assignment chains, but just random stuff, I don't go after them that way. If they PRESENT them like progressing missions, they might be treated that way...

Well, jumped on, checked out the updates. Skill tree is different again, had to respec. Did so, though they've completely separated Ground and Space skill sets. You get an alloted set of space and an alloted set of ground skill points (300k space / 100k Ground). Tested everything out. My ground combat was markedly improved, but my space combat was nerfed all to hell. So I'm going to have to use one of my respec tokens to go back in and see what I can do.

My specs have been split up between ground and space for ages and I never had any problems in space combat.

Also: I love Threat Control. Finaly a skill to help with tanking/not pulling aggro.

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Well, yeah, I'm talking about having to respec and the setup being different after the patch. I had saved my old settings, but they couldn't be applied the same way this time around, and my attacks have been noticeably weaker. I've specced twice since this afternoon, and I think I have it back to the way it was before the change-up.

[...] they've completely separated Ground and Space skill sets. You get an alloted set of space and an alloted set of ground skill points (300k space / 100k Ground).

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I don't think I've logged into STO since SWTOR started its Early Game Access and I haven't been paying attention to STO news either, so I'm very glad to hear that separate skill point pools for space and ground has finally made its way in-game.

The skills points are actually still in one pool, there is just a cap on the max you can allocate to space or ground. Cryptic wants to prevent a player from putting all points in space combat while ignoring ground action. I respec'd two characters but I'll probably go back and tweak/respec again once I see how the changes affect performance. Not a problem as most of my characters have several unused respec tokens.